Teachers' Use of Curriculum to Support Students in Writing Scientific Arguments to Explain Phenomena

摘要

The role of the teacher is essential for students' successful engagement inscientific inquiry practices. This study focuses on teachers' use of an 8-week chemistrycurriculum that explicitly supports students in one particular inquiry practice, the construc-tion of scientific arguments to explain phenomena in which students justify their claimsusing evidence and reasoning. Participants included 6 teachers and 568 students. Video-tapes, teacher questionnaires, and student pre- and posttests were analyzed to develop casestudies that characterized the support the teachers provided their students for scientific argu-mentation and subsequent student learning. Patterns from the case studies suggest that oneparticular instructional practice, the way teachers defined scientific argumentation, charac-terized teachers' support and influenced the other practices they used in their classrooms.In some cases, the teachers' definitions of scientific argumentation did not align with theintended learning goal in the curriculum materials. These teachers' greater simplificationof this complex inquiry practice resulted in decreased learning gains in terms of students'ability to write scientific arguments to explain phenomena using appropriate evidenceand reasoning. Educative curriculum materials can have a positive impact on teachers'